Shanghai, 1916Yuliang has just drifted to sleep when a splash and a shout jolt her back into awareness – just in time for a near-collision with a Shanghai garbage barge.‘Out of the way, dog-face!’ their sampan’s captain shouts. ‘Your steering stinks as much as your cargo!’ He gestures obscenely, then darts a look at Yuliang. ‘Sorry, madame. There it is, then.’ He points. ‘The great city.’Yuliang shades her eyes. At first Shanghai is little more than twinkling color and tone, a distant blur of smoke and stone and lush green. But as their craft draws closer the horizon melts into clarity, revealing a shoreline so sparklingly alien she draws her breath.‘The Bund,’ Zanhua pronounces, the word as hard as a piece of metal in his mouth.‘Bund,’ she repeats obediently. ‘Is that French?’‘Indian, I think. It means “gathering place.”’‘That’s strange. To name a Chinese place with a foreign word.’He laughs. ‘Wait until you see the city. Half the street names are French or English.
